Heather Reisman on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos
Our nation's biggest bookworm heads up Canada's largest bookstore chain Chapters-Indigo. Watch the interview. Bio
"...Wow George, did Reisman just say that functional illiteracy is easily
fixed? By putting more books in little-used school libraries? If kids
don't care to read, it doesn't matter how many books are in the
library; kids aren't taking out books. I don't believe this is the root
cause of the problem. Sure it would be nice to have more books but
that's not the main issue.
It is not at all easy to "fix" the attitudes of a huge number of
Canadian parents who don't make reading a priority for their children
or actively encourage their kids to read. The real issue here is
parenting and class sizes. Where parenting may fail, individual teacher
attention might be able to pick up the slack, but with classes of 28
children, 10 of which have identified special needs, teacher's are
spread too thin.
Increasing the number of books in libraries is a great idea but
certainly won't go far to teach kids how to read or foster a love of
reading in today's youth. Parents are the most important factor in that
equation. But of course, we always look to schools and more money...." Posted by Todd Fox on March 04, 2009 at 08:31 PM
I just watched a YT clip and went back to PBS online to revisit this topic. Wow...a good reminder for parents and teachers about how are children function in the internet age. Check it out. Watch online.
In Growing Up Online, FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the very public
private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about
how the Internet is transforming childhood. "The Internet and the digital world
was something that belonged to adults, and now it's something that really is the
province of teenagers, " says C.J.
Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of California, Berkeley's
Digital Youth
Research project.
"They're able to have a private space, even while they're still at home.
They're able to communicate with their friends and have an entire social life
outside of the purview of their parents, without actually having to leave the
house."
As more and more kids grow up online, parents are finding themselves on the
outside looking in. "I remember being 11; I remember being 13; I remember being
16, and I remember having secrets," mother of four Evan Skinner says. "But it's
really hard when it's the other side."
At school, teachers are trying to figure out how to reach a generation that
no longer reads books or newspapers. "We can't possibly expect the learner of
today to be engrossed by someone who speaks in a monotone voice with a piece of
chalk in their hand," one school principal says.
"We almost have to be entertainers," social studies teacher Steve Maher tells FRONTLINE. "They consume
so much media. We have to cut through that cloud of information around them, cut
through that media, and capture their attention."
Fears of online predators have led
teachers and parents to focus heavily on keeping kids safe online. But many
children think these fears are misplaced. "My parents don't understand that I've
spent pretty much since second grade online," one ninth-grader says. "I know
what to avoid."
Many Internet experts agree with the kids. "Everyone is panicking about
sexual predators online. That's what parents are afraid of; that's what parents
are paying attention to," says Parry
Aftab, an Internet security expert and executive director of WiredSafety.org. But the real
concern, she says, is the trouble that kids might get into on their own. Through
social networking and other Web sites, kids with eating disorders share tips
about staying thin, and depressed kids can share information about the best ways
to commit suicide.
(You Tube)
Rachel Dretzin: What piqued my interest in this subject was a story a
friend told me about her 13-year-old nephew -- a spectacularly bright and
sensitive boy who is known for his kindness and modesty. Unbeknownst to his
parents, he had started a blog, which they only learned about when another
parent called to warn them. Evidently, this boy had made an offensive racial
comment about another kid in his grade. When my friend and her husband read what
he had written, they were shocked. They didn't recognize their own son, whom
they felt they knew well, and could hardly believe he'd written the words they
saw on his computer screen.
When they confronted him, the boy was mortified. As they talked about it, it
became clear that the supposed anonymity and immediacy of the Internet had led
him to say things he never would say in "real" life -- and didn't even mean. It
was a game, an exercise, a way of trying on identities.
CBC-theLens: Fixing the Brain Premiering On: Tuesday November 18, 2008 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld
Fixing My Brain tells the dramatic story of Barbara
Arrowsmith, a woman who fixed her own brain, and the journey of three
learning-disabled boys who spent a year at her "brain bootcamp" in an
effort to change the brain they were born with. The film examines the
question: Are we stuck with the brains that we're born with, or is the
brain a highly intelligent muscle, able to change itself through
specific exercises?
Barbara Arrowsmith was born with a "broken brain". Although her
brilliant memory had propelled her through a graduate degree, she still
couldn't read a clock, tell right from left, or understand
conversations in real time. Exhausted by the stress of hiding her
weaknesses, she contemplated suicide. But she was ferociously
determined to discover why her brain was "broken".
With extraordinary diligence, Barbara Arrowsmith fused several
different strands of brain science and by using herself as a guinea pig
- she fixed her own brain. Putting herself through a "brain boot camp"
for twelve hours a day over many months, she used her self-created
exercises to stimulate the weak areas of her brain and achieved
extraordinary results. Finally, she was able to tell time, understand
logic and understand conversations in real time. When Barbara tried to
share her success with educators they branded her a charlatan - because
at that time, (the late 1970s) people believed that the brain was
hard-wired and the brain's abilities could not be changed. So Barbara
opened her own school, Arrowsmith School, to help students with learning dysfunctions. Fixing My Brain also follows the courageous journey of three learning-disabled boys as they face the challenges of re-wiring their brains.
"Fixing My Brain challenges our preconceptions of who we
are, how we learn and how we teach our children. It examines the
exhilarating possibility that we truly can change our destiny by
learning how to change the pathways of our brain," says award-winning
writer and director Christina Pochmursky.
Barbara Arrowsmith's training system is still the only one of its
kind in the world and her role as a visionary leader in education is
only now being acknowledged. ( CBC )
